Hard Work Paying Off As Lafayette Little League Prepares For Junior League World Series (Audio)

The Lafayette Little League Junior All Stars (13-14 years old) is making a special trip this weekend, as they head to Detroit (area) for the Junior League World Series all next week. They've just come off of sweeping two Texas teams (Texas West and Texas East) in the Southwest Regional Tournament in Albuquerque, New Mexico, holding on in the championship game by beating Texas West 8-6.

The team is made up of 11 players: Tyler Miller, Cain Castille, Emile Lege, Miguel Reyes, Nick Fruge, Brandon Duhon, Matthew Delcambre, Max Jumonville, Mike Guidry, Colin Thibodeaux, and Ethan Hines. The coaches are Kevin Delcambre, Greg Guidy and Nick Fruge. Head Coach Delcambre visited with Brandon Comeaux on "Your Afternoon Drive Home" to talk about his team's ride to the Junior League World Series.

It's exciting. This is a rare thing. There's a lot of teams that start out and it's a hard road to get to the World Series...It's a special trip and we're going to make the most of it.

Lafayette Little League Southwest Regional Champions, Facebook

Head Coach Delcambre also praised his assistant coaches for the job they've done in helping this team accomplish this special feat. "All the coaches have been great," says Coach Delcambre. "They've put in a lot of hard work. We've put in a lot of practice, spent a lot of time on the practice field...We've been putting the work in and the coaches have done a great job at doing that."

Coach Delcambre says on Friday evening, after arriving in Detroit, the team had their first practice since they won the Southwest Regional earlier this week. This Lafayette Little League team has hit very well throughout state and regional tournament play. They have been able to get on base, and then once they get there, are very tough to stop on the base paths. "This is the fastest team I've ever coached," says Coach Delcambre. "We have a lot of speed...It puts a lot of pressure on the opponents when you have that kind of speed." Coach Delcambre then addressed how balanced the lineup is. "The whole lineup is doing a job hitting and every kid on this team is contributing, every one of them is playing a major role to getting us to where we are," says Coach Delcambre.

Five of these players have played in a Little League World Series before, representing Lafayette Little League in the 2011 Little League World Series (11-12 year olds). When you combine that with the talent of the other six players, the maturity in age of the team overall and learning from playing great teams last season, Coach Delcambre says they went in very confident this season. "Going in this year, we were confident because we were built the same way they (two Texas teams from last year) were," says Coach Delcambre. "We were an older team."

Lafayette opens tournament play Sunday at 4:30 p.m. vs the representative of US Central. The team will play three other pool play games, Monday at 10:00 am vs US East, Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. vs US Southeast and Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. vs US West. The top two teams in the US pool will advance to the US Championship Game on Friday night at 7:00 p.m. All games can be heard on Sportsradio ESPN 1420 AM and espn1420.com. James P. Bitterman will have the call.

These trips are very expensive. If you would like to help the LLL All Stars and their families with the costs of these trips, click HERE.